the_drowned_manfandomcom-20200213-history
Badlands Jack
History An intimidating and sleazy character who lives in the trailer park and runs the saddle shop. Often observes other characters outside the gates and seems to control the rent in the park as well. Badlands Jack is a rough-looking cowboy with a bottle of whisky and a bad attitude. His name is taken from a grifter character in ‘The Day of the Locust’. He manages a lot of the property outside the studio, including the seedy motel (the San Bernardino Arms), the Drugstore, the Trailer Park and the Saddlery. He’s not popular with the other residents and has confrontations with most of them. He lusts after the women, including Faye and Drugstore Girl. The last performance including Badlands Jack was on March 30th, 2014. The character was briefly brought back on April 8, 2014, this time played by Andrew Garfield (who was in London promoting The Amazing Spider-Man 2), though his role here was limited to the 1:1. The full character returned for the final performance on July 6, 2014. Appearance Dressed in a black vest over a shirt in cowboy style, drinks from a hip flask often and carries a knife Loop - Basic - Exits trailer (Trailer Park) - Watches town through binoculars (Motel Reception) - Finds small noose in apple (Saddlery) - Miguel steals noose from Jack’s hands (Saddlery) - Dances as Conrad sings in the saloon (Saddlery) - Evicts Romola (Trailer Park) - Attacked by Miguel; given package (Trailer Park) - Takes package to Gatekeeper (Gates) - Hides (Outside Saloon) - Cleans saddle (Saddlery) - Collects envelope (Grocer Store) - Opens letter of straws (Motel Reception) - Hangs out with Drugstore Girl (Drugstore) - Closes gates (Gates) - Chases Andy with knife (Forest/Trailer Park) - Freaks out at scarecrow (Church) - Collapses on bed (Motel Room) - Dances at Hoedown (Saloon) - Watches fight from other end of bar (Saloon) - Receives large noose from Barman (Saloon) - Lurks by window (Drugstore) - Breaks down; embraced by Drugstore Girl (Drugstore) - Hangs himself; interrupted by Tuttle (Chess Room) - Final loop only: collects rose (Drugstore) * Does three 1:1s in trailer Loop - Extended He drinks whisky at his trailer and sings to himself. There’s a Tarot card near his front door that reads ‘Judgement’. He leaves his trailer and wanders about the town. He goes to the Grocery and steals money from the till and a couple of apples from the display. Jack sits at the counter of the ‘San Bernardino Arms’ and reads a book entitled ‘A History of Torture and Death’. As he reads, he makes faces and contorts his features into bizarre shapes. He occasionally pulls out a pair of tiny opera glasses to spy on the people across the street. He rips a picture from the book and hands it to an audience member. He reads a letter lying on the counter about the eviction of one of the tenants in the trailer park. Her name is Romola Martin and she’s six months in arrears with her rent. Jack walks to the town square and enters ‘Jack Hodge’s Saddlery Store’. The shop name is taken from ‘The Day of the Locust’, and the wood-panelled walls are covered with animal skulls and fur skins. He shines a saddle surrounded by Stetson hats and the American flag. Conrad can be heard singing in the Tavern next door. Jack eats one of the apples from the Grocery and feels something strange in his mouth. He stops chewing and pulls out a small length of string tied in a noose. Confused and disgusted he throws it on the floor. He smashes the apple against the wall and it explodes. He returns to the Trailer Park and heads for the caravan belonging to Romola Martin. He starts to throw her stuff out when she suddenly shouts at him from a nearby trailer. She’s confused and he harrangs her as she lies crouched in the dirt. She scrambles to pick up her stuff and he pushes her over. He shouts that her rent is due, and grabs her by the neck. She fights back and he cowers. ‘You got two days’ he snarls and staggers away. He sits outside his trailer taking swigs from his hip flask. He looks around furtively and picks out an audience member. He beckons him inside, locking the door behind them. 1:1 He tells the man to sit down and removes his mask. ‘I said it would happen again’, he mumbles, ‘They thought I was crazy, but it did happen again’. He pours two shots of whisky and they drink. He stands over the man holding out a long black cloth. The man is blindfolded and Jack takes him through a tunnel. The man is disorientated and he can feel branches against his arms and sand under his feet. Jack tells him that ‘the world is on fire’ and the man can feel a burning heat on his face. Jack says that the earth is ‘hotter than hell’, but he puts his hands on the man’s cheeks and they’re icy cold. He pushes him out the door into the town square and tells him that he’s on his own. Jack is in the Trailer Park and Miguel jumps out of the shadows. He hands a brown paper package to Jack, who walks over to the studio gates and gives it to The Gatekeeper. The package is eventually delivered to Mr Stanford by Romola. Jack wanders back to the town. He collects a series of envelopes from the Grocery and the Motel Reception. He goes to the diner and tries to seduce Drugstore Girl, handing her a rose that she rejects. He pushes over a carousel of postcards and she looks at him with contempt. He goes to the Tavern for company, but is rejected by the townspeople he rules over and is completely alone. In the throes of depression, he takes a knife from his belt and points it towards his neck. Jack is jealous of Andy and his relationship with Drugstore Girl. He scrawls out a note and passes it to an audience member. It reads, ‘I just spotted Andy in the Drugstore again. If he keeps on hanging out with my girl, he’ll be in big trouble!! He is as good as dead. Gotta watch out for the Sandman though. Earth is hotter than hell!! Jack.” The note ends with a sketch of a bloody knife. Jack sees Andy in the woods and starts to goad him. Andy doesn’t want a fight, but Jack attacks him. He chases him through the trees and they end up in a dark chapel where a creepy straw figure sits on a pew. Jack panics and cries, ‘What is that’, before running away. He collapses on a bed in the Motel. He goes back to the Tavern and the ‘Day of the Dead Hoedown’ kicks off. While the others party, he gets drunk and parodies the dancers whirling around him. It’s embarrassing and shambolic. When the brawl breaks out between William and Dwayne, Jack is slouched up behind the bar, punching the air and trying to direct the fighters. Andy carries William outside, and Jack and The Barman relax with a drink, unfazed by the night’s events. The Barman pours whisky into a number of shot glasses and pushes them towards the audience members sitting at the bar. Jack is about to leave when The Barman calls him back to give him a package. The front of the envelope is blank and Jack says, ‘I don’t like surprises, boy’. Without explanation, The Barman also gives him a large rope twisted into a noose. Jack rolls across the bar, scattering audience members in his way, and lands on the other side with surprising grace. He starts out on a deranged drunken tour of the town carrying a collection of bizarre items - the noose, a package of drugs and a number of smaller blank envelopes. He staggers back to the Saddlery. He slices open one of the envelopes, holding it up to a light bulb and dozens of white feathers flutter out. He gurns and splutters angry curses. He moves on, swaggering with a wide cowboy gait - a mumbling wreck, powered by alcohol, rage and self-loathing. He enters Conrad’s motel room, shuts the door and sits down heavily on the bed. He opens another blank envelope and more feathers tumble out. He takes a wrap of powder out of the pocket of his black jeans and snorts it off his fingertips. He suddenly hurls his body backwards into the corner of the room, knocking over a table. He slams onto the bed and then runs head-on into the motel door, smacking into it. He lands heavily on the floor before getting to his feet. He stumbles onwards to the diner and snarls at Drugstore Girl. He lurches behind the counter and she looks worried. He sees that she’s wearing Andy’s varsity jacket and he pulls it off her. He puts it on and grunts, ‘Hey, do I look like a jock now?’ He opens another envelope and by now he knows what’s inside. He grabs Drugstore Girl and pulls out his knife, toying with her as he runs it along the buttons of her gingham shirt. He lurks by the window and sees Miguel dancing with Faye and the two lovers end up pressed against the Saddlery. Jack looks on in disgust and becomes suicidal again. He toys with the rope, twisting and pulling it. He drags it through the town and enters a strange room near a photography stand. The room is filled with chessboards and chicken cages. On a table, there’s an abandoned game of cards and some tequila shots. There’s a pentagram painted on the wall. Jack takes the rope and tries to hang it from the ceiling. He’s struggling to set it up because he’s so drunk. Suddenly he’s interrupted by Mr Tuttle who bursts in and tries to take the rope from him. They wrestle and the rope somehow ends up around Mr Tuttle’s neck. Jack staggers off, oblivious and still deranged. Final Show He returned! Trivia Badlands Jack was inexplicably removed from the cast towards the end of the run, and his last show was on March 30th 2014. Was played by Andrew Garfield in for one performance in April 2014 Darkly clad and easy to anger, Jack’s narrative arc goes from drunk and mean to drunker and meaner. Unlike most of the characters, he has no interest in the movie-making business going on inside the gates. He’s suicidal and prone to babbling meaninglessly to himself. Unlike the Hollywood cowboys, like Gary Cooper, James Garner and John Wayne, he’s already a relic, a burned-out icon. He represents an unrefined and fading cowboy masculinity, and he resides in a purgatory of scattered trailers. Some reviewers say that in amongst his incoherent rambling, Jack admits to wiping out an entire native village. He’s racked with guilt – the town he helped develop is built on the ruins of this past atrocity. Much of the odd behaviour seen around Temple Studios is a result of the cursed ground underfoot. Jack is a twisted representation of America and it’s history, built on so much destruction, profiteering and the death of Native American culture. The name ‘San Bernardino Arms’ is taken from a real location in Los Angeles and is also the name of Tod’s apartment block in ‘The Day of the Locust’ – ‘The house he lived in was a nondescript affair called the San Bernardino Arms. It was an oblong three stories high, the back and sides of which were of plain unpainted stucco, broken by even rows of unadorned windows.’ In the Motel Reception, there’s a scrapbook filled with newspaper clippings of murder stories. One is about Elizabeth Short, nicknamed ‘The Black Dahlia’ and the victim of a gruesome murder in Los Angeles in 1947. Also on the counter is a series of notes written by Jack and held together by a bulldog clip. He’s documented a number of arguments between William and Mary, noting where and when they occurred. He mentions a child crying and staring out of the window. The notes say that the child witnessed his mum having sex with Dwayne. The notion that earth is hotter than hell is fitting for a desert town, and it’s also a common theme from ‘Woyzeck’. Bouts of heat and dizziness characterize Woyzeck’s growing madness. Heat is linked to Woyzeck’s apocalyptic visions of fire. In the first scene, he talks of ‘smoke coming from the land like an oven’. Later he claims, ‘When the sun is at its highest point in the sky and it is as if the whole world is on fire – that’s when a terrible voice spoke to me’. When Woyzeck spies Marie and the Drum Major dancing at the inn, he internalises the heat of their passion so that he feels physically hot. The voice in his head repeats, ‘Stab, stab the bitch dead’, like a mad refrain. The heat and dizzying cycles only end when Woyzeck has succumbed to his demons and fatally stabbed her. He says, ‘Are you cold, Marie? And yet you’re so warm. What hot lips you’ve got. Hot whore’s breath’. Quotes References Image credit: http://www.westendtheatre.com/wp-content/gallery/the-drowned-man/mg_2597.jpg[[Category:Characters]]